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I almost entirely agree Gerry, but would add that providing coverage for everyone should lower the cost per individual since more presumably will get preventative care and there will be fewer visits to the emergency room for basic care which is a large cost in the system.

It does not solve the problem of 12 million illegals who will still be visiting the emergency rooms, and will not be covered by Obamacare. We need to solve that problem with immigration reform.

I'm not entirely sure that the emergency room visits are at the core of the rising cost of health care. Have you found numbers on that Henry?

There will also be a lot of this coverage that is subsidized. As I recall, families of four, will be eligible for subsidy up to a substantial income limit.

I agree that the actions should be offsetting. The increased sales of the products because more people have insurance should offset the tax.

Yet, historically, tax on a product/service has been passed onto the consumer.

If medical devices lower long term costs to individuals there could be some savings in total health care costs too.

Not totally sure this works in all scenarios. In the UK, cheapest of all is to not replace an old person's hip at all ... and that often is the option that the old person is left with.

Regarding your first two sentences, the thing you are leaving out of the profit margin equation is the fact that government benefits like Medicare and food stamps are directly subsidizing the profit margins of many large and small businesses. A lot of the people on food stamp and medicaid work full and part time jobs at low wages. For example, do a search on "walmart medicaid" or "walmart food stamps". You find facts like:
- 20% of the employees at the nation's largest employer do not have health insurance That would mean that 80% of them do have health insurance. If we consider that many of those employees may be part-time, then that doesn't appear to be too bad, on the face of it.

- Wal-Mart's employees rely on $2.66 billion in government help every year, or about $420,000 per store. How would that compare to the amount Walmart pays in taxes each year? I don't know. Just wondering.

- In state after state, Wal-Mart employees are the top recipients of Medicaid.That is not surprising since most of the jobs are probably low-skill, low-paying jobs ... but those may be the only jobs available to those employees.

- As many as 80 percent of workers in Wal-Mart stores use food stamps. Could they get a better job somewhere else?

- Ironically, WalMart is the largest recipient of food stamp dollars. For example in OK over half of all food stamp dollars are spent at walmart.

Is there a reason for that?

- The costs to taxpayers is $202 million annually for medicaid coverage alone.
-Wal-Mart does increase Medicaid expenditures for the rest of us by roughly $898 per worker
- Walmart makes 15 billion in profit each year.

Do we know whether these people working for Walmart would be receiving benefits if they worked somewhere else in a job for which they are qualified? Would everyone be better off if Walmart didn't employ so many people? Would it cost more to provide benefits to these workers if they were not working for Walmart?

Is Walmart to blame for having available many low-skill jobs?

Why is it essentially wrong for Walmart to make a profit if they do so by providing a fair exchange of product and/or service for those who wish to purchase those products/services? Do other similar retailers provide better benefits and wages? There are probably some retired people that are benefiting from their early investments in Walmart stock, placing less burden on social services because they have such income from that investment.

Could these Walmart employees find better jobs elsewhere?

I guess that they have decided that 15 billion is their margin so that is a good justification to pass many of their employees health care and food costs on to the rest of us or else they will "go out of business". Great system. Especially when the right wing entertainment complex has most of the people around this board convinced that it is all the employees fault for being on food stamps.

Isn't Walmart free to earn as much as it can legally earn? If we don't approve of them, we can shop elsewhere.

I would bet that many employees at Papa John's follow this same pattern. The question to ask, is whether it is worth paying $0.07 more per pizza or losing that much in revenue so that the employees have some health coverage? The owner of Papa John's apparently does not think it is worth it. Actually, from what I have read, he has no intentions of providing coverage, he is outraged that he will have to pay the penalty.

The public can voice its disapproval by buying less pizza from Papa John, and more from Pizza Hut ... or others.

So, are you concerned about these subsidize? and how do you propose that we stop subsidizing the profit margins of these companies by the government providing their employees with medical insurance and food stamps?

We're going to be subsidizing everyone's employees through Obamacare ... except those who got waivers. Certain groups of people will continue to enjoy luxury benefits because they will not be fined for those luxury plans. Not knowing all that have received waivers, and for what reasons, it may be that some of those with waivers will be allowed to provide less than the benefits prescribed by Obamacare.

To me it seems ludicrous that people would be fined for paying their own pre-tax income for a better plan than the minimum plan. The govt should be delighted that those individuals will be making no demands on the overall system and are not in need of any subsidies. Aren't they already paying their fair share by paying for their own good coverage?

G.Clinchy@gmail.com"Know in your heart that all things are possible. We couldn't conceive of a miracle if none ever happened." -Libby Fudim

​I don't use the PM feature, so just email me direct at the address shown above.

is the fact that government benefits like Medicare and food stamps are directly subsidizing the profit margins of many large and small businesses.

Originally Posted by Henry V

Marvin, should we talk about all the differences between today and yesteryear? Shall we go back to the 90% tax rate too? How about the facts that more than half the folks over 60 years old back in the 1960's had no insurance at all? Let's agree to deal with the realities of today and use past experiences to learn how to best move forward. IMO, the good & the bad of any generation should be a history lesson - what will be the good points of todays world? I have some, what are yours?

Medicare never did enter the conversation. Please note above a direct quote from your post #37?

I interjected Wally World to illustrate the concept that businesses regularly externalize some of their costs on the public. Gerry brought up the need to achieve some sort of profit margin. I responded. If you do not think that we are subsidizing the profits of these companies by publicly financing their employees benefits, please show some evidence.

Yes, young people subsidize the old in an insurance program. As you know that's what the whole concept of pooling risk is about. If they did not, then no one could afford insurance when they were old. You also know that people without insurance still get medical care but those of us with insurance are covering the costs of their care and their bankruptcies.

I am not on any of these programs and never have been. Good to know they are there in when they are needed. I have no authority to regulate or tax anyone.

Have you ever shopped at Wally World - we do on occasion but do use their pharmacy - look at the people they employ - the majority would have a hard time finding employment elsewhere so they apparently like what they do. It is only the union who is eager for the dues that keeps fomenting this caricature of Wally World .

So you say it is OK for the young to subsidize others - they are already being asked to shoulder more than their share in the program that the politico's turned into a Ponzi scheme called SS.

& lastly - are you not involved in environmental programs? It is not the authority as much as the enabling that is equally to blame .

Have you ever shopped at Wally World - we do on occasion but do use their pharmacy - look at the people they employ - the majority would have a hard time finding employment elsewhere so they apparently like what they do. It is only the union who is eager for the dues that keeps fomenting this caricature of Wally World .

So you say it is OK for the young to subsidize others - they are already being asked to shoulder more than their share in the program that the politico's turned into a Ponzi scheme called SS.

& lastly - are you not involved in environmental programs? It is not the authority as much as the enabling that is equally to blame .

Well Marvin, if you want to start a thread about what is good with this world today, please do so.

I concede that I did accidentally make one use of the term medicare. It should have said medicaid. I had no intent to bring up medicare which is a very popular program since the private sector could not afford to offer a similar product.

On the rest, we will have to disagree. I shop at WalMart as little as is possible. If you buy that unions are behind all the analysis and reports of the bad effects of walmart on wages and the job market then you have truly drunk the kool aid. Yes, I know, unions are evil and are one of the primary reasons we are going to hell in a handbasket even though they represent a small fraction of people employed and have less influence than ever before.

Yes, young subsidize the old, that is the system. The young who get old will be subsidized one way or another by the young in the future. That is exactly how private insurance works too. Those who do not need insurance subsidize those that do whether you are talking about cars, or homeowners, or health, or life insurance. Pooling risks is the idea.

Environmental issues, yes, I work on them. Seems that you are way more interested in my personal life than I am in yours. You clearly have bought into the right wing narrative that environmental regulations are bad for the economy and another part of the root of all evil. Please take a look at state economies or national economies and their environmental regulations. Guess what?, the states/nations with the strongest regulations have the best economies, imagine that. You also seem to have drunk the kool aid on the effects of regulations and also assume that the little old environmental organizations funded on relatively tiny budgets by donations have any power relative to various industries with many millions and a bunch of lobbyists. Shall I make a long list of issues where a failure to implement reasonable regulations has resulted in huge public costs to society while industries externalized their costs and increase their profits? You know, the american way, privatize the profits and socialize the true costs.

Well, at least they are passing this cost on to consumers rather than hurting their profit margin. You would hate to see that because then there would be less to trickle down.

So, the owners of the businesses should be penalized due to a social experiment gone awry??
You do know that the reason business operates is to generate profit, unlike the Govt that answers to NO ONE about the bottom line.

Sorry been there, my description of Campisis would be a good Italian restaurant that also makes a bad pizza. When in Dallas, I would much rather go to the Hard Eight.

Hell, that's a B que place. We were talking pizza. As far as BBQ goes, any BBQ place with more than one location can't be the best and that includes Dickey's. Give me the hole in the wall joint that's been there forever. Angelo's in Fort Worth, Sonny Bryan's in Dallas before Sonny died. There are a couple of places almost next door to each other in Taylor, TX that are damn good. Then there is that joint in Dripping Spring, TX that cooks on an open pit. Too many to name.

Hell, that's a B que place. We were talking pizza. As far as BBQ goes, any BBQ place with more than one location can't be the best and that includes Dickey's. Give me the hole in the wall joint that's been there forever. Angelo's in Fort Worth, Sonny Bryan's in Dallas before Sonny died. There are a couple of places almost next door to each other in Taylor, TX that are damn good. Then there is that joint in Dripping Spring, TX that cooks on an open pit. Too many to name.

Hard Eight gimme a break regards (but I will check it out),

We can't stay on topic very long on this forum. Attention span you know

charly

"Well, you know even though I'm old my body should not be worn out.............I'm a lazy person so I never used it enough to wear it out"

So, the owners of the businesses should be penalized due to a social experiment gone awry??
You do know that the reason business operates is to generate profit, unlike the Govt that answers to NO ONE about the bottom line.

If you don't like it, don't go there.

Then there is Denny's.................

No doubt! I like they way people have these grand ideas on how a company should run their business. Tell you what, why don't you go start a local pizza place. When you become very successful you can then franchise it across the country and when you have great success with that you can run the company any way you damn well please. Other wise like Stan said don't go there if you don't like it.

My guess is most of the people wanting to tell Papa John's or WalMart how they should run their business are similar to our president that hasn't started or ran a business in his life. Put in your 8 hours and go home is probably what a lot of you do. Try making decisions on a daily basis that may affect your business for years to come, good or bad!